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5 Ways To Use LinkedIn To Get More Visitors

All successful businesses require a consistent flow of new leads. One of the best sources for those leads is LinkedIn, the world’s largest business social network. Each month LinkedIn attracts 184 million unique visitors. That’s a lot of potential customer’s no matter what industry you are in. (1)

Many people who try marketing on LinkedIn make one of two mistakes. One group of marketers are overly promotional. They join groups and only ever promote their own business or content. Or they will they request recommendations and endorsements without offering anything in return. And then there are businesses who put up a profile but fail to use any of the other marketing tools that LinkedIn offers.

Both approaches will deliver poor results. Here you can learn 5 ways to use LinkedIn to market your business without hurting your brand.

#1 Laser Target Company Page Updates

Your LinkedIn Company Page can be a powerful marketing tool. People who follow your company page will receive updates and company news. But, if you content isn’t well targeted to your audience it can be ineffective or even annoying.

One recent update to company pages is the ability to target followers based on their user details. So for example, if you have an update that someone working in HR would love, but will bore a person working in accounts, then you can choose to target only the appropriate followers of your company page.

#2 Focus On The Right Groups

There are currently over 1.5 million groups on LinkedIn. That’s a lot of opportunity but it also means its is easy for you to lose your focus. You don’t want to waste time on groups that are going to deliver results. What you need is to find groups popular with your customers and that have a high level of user engagement.

When looking at groups to join first check the groups statistics. Look at the ratio of weekly comments to the post count. The higher the ratio the more engaged the members groups. This is critical because when you post content you want to be sure that group members will interact with it.

#3 Use Advanced Search To Find Leads

Making the right connections is what LinkedIn is all about. Advanced Search makes finding the right kind of clients much easier. LinkedIn knows a lot about its users which makes their search tool very powerful. You can search by characteristics including:

Location

Job Title

Industry

Keywords

Once you have created a list of prospects sort them by their relationship to you. This will show you how easily it will be to connect to a specific prospect. If there is someone you want to connect with but is currently out of reach, one trick is to join a group that they belong to. As members of the same group you will be able to message them.

#4 Add White Papers To Your Profile

White papers and free reports can be a great way to obtain potential leads. However, many people are not aware that they can add them to their profile. On each LinkedIn profile is a section marked Publications.

What makes this section perfect from a marketing perspective is the ability to link to any other site that you choose. For example, you might already have a landing page where people can receive your most recent white paper. In exchange they simply need to provide their email address and/or telephone number. Once you have these contact details your sales team can follow up and market to these prospects.

If you are unsure of how to setup a landing page for your business, contact us at FX Digital. We can help create you a high converting landing page that you can use for your LinkedIn marketing.

#5 Sponsored Updates

LinkedIn has a powerful self service advertising platform. Sponsored Updates are a relatively new innovation which allow you to take any update from your company page and broadcast it beyond your followers. A good idea is to test your updates on the existing followers for your company page. If an update is getting a high level of engagement you can then use paid advertising to get an even wider audience.

LinkedIn’s advertising platform gives you access to the networks rich user data. You can target your sponsored update so it appears in front of very specific target audiences. This includes targeting by industry, job title, seniority and location. The ability to geo-target your sponsored updates means that they are useful even for brick and mortar businesses which only want to attract leads from their local area.

Mistakes To Avoid

LinkedIn is a lot more business networking friendly than say, Facebook or Pinterest. That said it is still a social network. Be careful that when you are contributing to groups that you lead with value. Provide content that your target market will find useful, rather than simply promoting your services. Use tactics such as a give-away report in your publications section, to allow your profile to do your marketing for you.

Your Next Steps

Successful marketing on LinkedIn doesn’t have to take up a lot of time, it only requires that you are consistent. Dedicate 10 15 minutes per day where you will take at least one action on LinkedIn to market your business. This could be joining a new group, adding a new update to your company page or using advanced search to find a new lead. If you do this you will find that each of these small actions can compound into big results.